Cat's in the Cradle   Some decisions made mean that irreparable harm may happen to humanity, but will that stop Catwoman from actually doing it? And how much trouble will she be in with Jade? Author's Note: A Retroactive Continuity, or Retcon if you will, is the altering of previously known facts in order for the universe to conform to new story lines. This is mine. This is a retcon of the story of Catwoman's further adventures. Detective Comics owns the character of Catwoman, Bruce Wayne and Black Canary.

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Give me a progress report.

We have completed 88.2% of the identity documents you have requested. They are scheduled for delivery over the next two days, excepting the documents that have yet to be inserted into appropriate databases. The patents are applied for and approved. The will is in all appropriate locations and indicating you are the designated heir of Professor Stephen Kyle.

Excellent. That means that we are on schedule.

Correct.

What is the probability of detecting the identity documents as faked?

To all intents and purposes, the documents are the creation of the National Security Agency. They are indistinguishable from genuine documents. Any attempt to verify their authenticity will alert us to monitor the inquiry allowing us to use appropriate countermeasures. There is a very small chance that high ranking members of security agencies will even hear there is concern. the probability that they become interested enough to authorize a deeper search for verification is less that 2.0108%. in that case, the document or documents will appear to have been issued by another agency. The probability of contact with the agency in question is .0576%. this is the current worst case scenario. do you find the risk acceptable?

Yes. Do you have the list I asked for?

Affirmative. You will find it in the "working folder" section of the onboard memory. It has current contact information for all the companies you specified, complete contact information for their CEOs, as well as current financial statements from all their accounts. We continue to advise that you ignore Wayne Enterprises and simply sell to LuthorCorp or Stark Industries even more so with the additional bidders you indicated. A public auction of the type you have proposed has an unacceptable risk using the criteria normally applied. There is a 72% chance you will be discovered and revealed and/or arrested.

Understood, however I’m trying to set up a bidding war here. These particular corporations and governments have the resources to pay for and exploit the tech. From there, I can make a lot of money.

If money is the overall goal, may we again suggest you allow us to start playing with the electronic financial transfers to siphon money from various locations, a few cents at a time? It has the appeal of being incredibly lucrative with a minimal amount of danger to you. there is also the stock market option. at this time. our success rate in tests indicated as return of a 7% low to a high of 15% using moderately conservative investing.

Money is not the overriding objective. If that was all I was after, my second-story jobs are more than sufficient for my needs. The purpose of this is to get the tech out there and to pretty much "stick it" to Jade and her allies. If Catwoman’s name is attached to the offer, those that truly have sufficient resources to exploit this technology will know of me and how to retain me. The joy I get creating new tech is greater than the pleasure of breaking into homes and taking their trinkets just to send them back. That’s a different type of internal stimulus.

If the "high" is the goal, we can provide that to you too.

Thank you for the offer, but I don’t want a TekWar-kind of addiction to start.

Unknown reference.

Look up the "Tek Series" by William Shatner. Someone should have put up an illegal eBook copy at some point on the Internet by now.

There was silence for about twenty seconds.

Reference assimilated. There is no danger of becoming addicted to the stimulus as we can prevent the addiction as well. HOWEVER, your caution is understood.

Please finish the insertion of the documents, then confirm the patents are absolutely legally locked up so that they are in no danger of being revoked and the legal documents making me Professor Kyle’s heir. Thank you for all your work.

Thanks are unnecessary, but appreciated. There is another matter we must draw your attention to at this time.

What is it?

There seems to be another Artificial Intelligence that is on the collective World Wide Internet. We have not encountered it directly, but we have seen signs of it in various databases.

That is not encouraging. If you faced it directly, could you overcome it?

Negative.

Then I need to come up with intrusion countermeasures for you to use in case of a direct encounter. I don’t want my brain being hacked by another AI.

Understood.

The snow was falling outside the offices of Wayne Enterprises when Bruce Wayne opened the package delivered by messenger. A pair of DVDs in crystal cases fell onto his desk. They were labeled "One" and "Two". There were no other notes, no paper of any kind. The only return address was for a local post office here in Chicago. His investigators had already tracked down the postmaster of that office and found out that the package he was looking at had come to the postmaster in another envelope asking him to remail it from that post office.

Tracking things backwards led them to another postmaster, and finally to the mail carrier who had picked it up from a local drop box on his designated route. This was impossible to trace it any further.

Good spycraft, he thought to himself.

There was a memo from the chief of security; Barnes stated that there were no viruses or fingerprints on any of the items. The various identification numbers for the physical media showed as anonymous purchases from a website in such miniscule quantities that it couldn’t be traced.

He picked up the DVD labeled "One" and inserted it into a new DVD player attached to an isolated monitor. He picked up the remotes and began.

Snow was on the HD TV for a few moments and then it cleared. On the screen a stylized eye appeared. He recognized it, knowing it was the symbol used by the person identified as "Catwoman" in New York. The subtitles came up and followed the voiceover exactly.

"Hello Mr. Wayne. I am Catwoman. I have some technology that may interest you. Please watch this DVD entirely. If you require further verification, have someone research the information online and with the second DVD. Since you are watching this, your computer technicians have informed you that there are no viruses on these DVDs. This is important. Many of the documents I reference are available on the second DVD."

The screen cleared and he saw a construction worker standing in an empty lot.

"Hello. My name is Charles Cunningham. I am the owner and crew chief of Cunningham Construction. My company is here to build a wall. I’m told that I need to read this document first." He flashed a document on a clipboard towards the camera and Bruce froze the picture there. He couldn’t make out much of the print, but he recognized that it was simply a statement.

"’This construction crew has been retained to build a wall. This wall will be built out of multiple items that are commonly available at any construction center in the country. The specific materials are masonry, steel, glass, wood and aluminum. Part of the wooden section is going to be sheet-rocked. You will see a time lapse of the construction progress, including nighttime views. There will be four inset pictures from different views while the wall is constructed.’" He lowered the page.

"As you can see currently the Home Depot has delivered a truckload of supplies. My men are going to start the construction. I am told that there is a regular speed copy of this time lapse on disk two, whatever that means."

He walked away from the camera and started yelling at people. Sure enough, four little windows showing different views appeared in each corner. He found that he could select any of those views he wanted and could watch the activity from them. Each showed the same scene from a different perspective, obviously from the North, the South, the East, and West if the position of the sun was any indication. The main view seemed to be directed to the North East, showing the best perspective on the actual construction.

The brick wall quickly took shape. The wooden extended from the top of the bricks using plywood and two by fours. Next, steel girders were placed above the wood. They extended at a 45-degree angle to the ground, helping to brace the wooden layer. Bruce saw that each transition from one section to the next added a slope until the glass portion of the wall was parallel to the ground, fifty feet in the air with girders to support everything to keep it from tipping over.

He ran this section back and forth several times trying to understand why someone would build a wall that was deliberately tipped. He selected the various views and saw that the wooden section had the two-by-fours extended and anchored into the ground, and the steel girders holding that section were also braced into the ground. Everything was leaning on each other, and looked more and more like it would fall. The front view looked like someone had deliberately built a lean-to fifty feet tall which was only braced by the support beams on the corners. A very odd piece of construction.

What made it even odder was that he couldn’t see any concrete, mortar, nails, rivets or screws to attach each of these segments to each other, or even to build them correctly. There were no air guns to drive nails into the frame so the plywood and sheetrock would stay attached to each other. It looked like they were constructing it with duct tape.

The time obviously changed, since the sun changed perspective and finally set. Lights on cherry pickers and cranes used during construction pointed to every part of the wall, guaranteeing that the wall wasn’t tampered with through the night. If the time stamp was altered it was impossible to tell. Dawn came and eventually a different car drove into the lot. A man got out, opened a bag and walked to the main camera.

"Hello. My name is John Gale. I am a professional acrobat and free climber. I have been hired to demonstrate some technology to you."

He held up a pair of full hand gloves and a pair of climbing shoes. The shoes were slightly modified to fit tightly to Mr. Gale’s feet. He put them down on the trunk of the car and picked up the camera. He pointed it the gloves and shoes, insuring a very tight close up.

Bruce occasionally went climbing recreationally; he could tell the equipment was standard REI climbing gear, with the exception of a Velcro strap to make sure the shoes fit tightly, preventing them from slipping from the climber’s feet. He had even used those particular gloves at times.

John put the camera back on the tripod that had been holding it. Bruce paused the playback, rewound it, and picked another view to see what kind of camera it was. He saw a standard TV station shoulder camera, used all over the country. It was large and bulky, but the video and audio fidelity were high quality.

Bruce switched back to the main feed and watched. John sat on the trunk of the car and pulled out a strip of standard medical EEG contacts. He placed one each on the back of his hands, and one each on the back of his heels. He then slowly pulled on the gloves, and showed the camera that he was attaching a portion of the glove on the inside to the contact pad, and then pulling the Velcro straps tight around his wrist. He then did the same thing with his shoes, attaching them to the contact pads then making sure they were tight on his feet. He did a few minutes of stretches then walked to the wall.

Bruce watched as he placed his hands on the brickwork and started scaling it. It was somewhat impressive, but any competent climber could do it by working his fingers and toes into the cracks in the brickwork. It was what happened next that impressed Bruce.

He continued to scale the wall, up the wooden section this time, while it was at a negative 22-degree slope. His fingers were touched to the wood, then his next hand, then his feet, the classic three point climbing technique. There weren’t any handgrips, how was it managed?

A sixth feed came up on the screen, a camera from the point of view of the climber. He was wearing goggles of some sort, and Bruce assumed that was where the feed was coming from. Each of the cameras continued to track his progress up the wall. This continued until he was hanging upside down from the glass section of the wall, clinging to it like a human fly.

In every case, John didn’t actually grab anything, he just put his palm on the surface he was climbing on, and then his toes on the same surface, moved up and then repeated it. The glass section was the most impressive thing Bruce had ever seen. No chalk, no belay, no safety equipment of any kind, he just placed a palm on the surface and then moving to the next area. John was even able to move around the end of the glass section and stand on the top area. All the camera views showed him doing this, and there didn’t seem to be any means of support.

The display changed and showed the Catwoman eye again.

"Mister Wayne. This demonstration is of a technology that will allow anyone to climb any surface. This will allow the wearer of the gloves and shoes to cling to an average building and free climb up that surface as high as they wish.

"This technology is for sale if you submit the winning bid. You are among a group of people offered the possibility of exclusive rights to this technology. The purchaser will receive access to the entire process, all development notes and production details as well as software to control this technology. And, with a modest annual royalty payment, this insures your continued exclusive rights.

"First, the actual gloves and shoes with all technology intact will be provided. It is open for analysis by your people, duplication, as well as replication in any design you require. Second, there are microprocessors that are part of the device that control the mechanism; they fit into one square centimeter. The processor involved currently has a benchmark of twenty gigabytes. Third is the memory chip that has a capability of storing one terabyte of information which also fits into a square centimeter. If necessary, I will point you toward batteries suitable to power all of this which will also fit into an extremely small area. I believe these batteries are currently used to power those holiday cards that play music or record voices.

"On the second disk are documents and affidavits from the people you met, the camera operators, and those who provided the building materials. Lab tests, bench tests, as well as incremental loads tests with pictures are also on the next DVD. There is one more thing you should see to properly evaluate the product I offer."

The picture cut back to the wall. Mr. Cunningham was standing there. He held up a remote control, showed it to the camera, and pushed a button. The entire wall fell apart into its individual parts, each brick, each board; all the components fell to the ground. In a matter of seconds, the whole wall was down, including the supports used for stability.

Catwoman’s voice continued. "This wall was assembled using an alternate version of this same technology, using the product in a double-sided sticky tape configuration. The only thing holding this entire wall in its assembled state was the intellectual property offered. Now these building materials are ready to be used in any other design required. This technology you are bidding on can easily be altered to become the ultimate fastener or the penultimate glue, among other simple application. You are really bidding on four pieces of technology.

"Disk Two also contains bidding protocol. Included is my PGP public key. It will ensure encryption your bids to me. I am assuming that your PGP key on the Wayne Industries site currently is accurate. I have included copies of your financial statements; even the ones you think are hidden in various places. I know your current financials.

"If your bid is not encrypted, I will not accept it. If I cannot decrypt your bid, I will not accept it. You should also be aware of the caliber of the other bidders; you will find a list of the people I have also sent their own copies of this DVD to on Disk 2 as well. Consider, do you really desire one of them gaining this technology and not you?

"I look forward to hearing from you soon."

Bruce Wayne had not been so thoroughly stunned in many years. He watched the entire DVD again, selecting different views and looking at the information included. He called several people together and had them go through the DVD with him, getting their thoughts on this technology.

All the information on the two DVDs was scrutinized, processed by the best minds in his company. The finest technicians available to him went over all of the videos, engineers and scientists looked at the supporting documents.

The pronouncement of his staff two weeks later was that it was genuine and fraud was impossible. The original people involved in this production were found and interviewed.

Now Bruce had to consider if he would bid on this technology at all. The price for this was likely to be prohibitive given who all were bidding against him.

The bids came in, just as she had envisioned. The corporations she had sent the DVDs to had already bid, Stark Industries, LuthorCorp, Wayne Enterprises and Rescue Equipment International. She had gotten the bids from the NSA, the Secretary of the Defense, Homeland Security, the Russian Security Forces, the Israeli Special Forces and Mossad. She had considered sending it to the French, but they had too many problems and not enough cash to utilize the tech correctly. She was still waiting on the bids from the Japanese and the English, both the Military and their Secret Service.

Jade has arrived and is standing against the wall.

Thank you. Using her peripheral vision, she saw the contour of the bubble that Jade traveled in. Jade had apparently modified it to make the surface of the bubble project the scene behind her, from the perspective of the viewer, similar to the optical camouflage that Kyle had developed.

"That’s a pretty neat trick Jade. You will have to show me how you manage to do that with an energy field rather than something physical."

Jade materialized exactly where Catwoman’s computer predicted she would appear. "It’s an even neater trick being able to see me when I’m invisible. You will have to show ME how you do that. Or are you planning on selling that technology to everyone as well?"

Catwoman leaned back in the chair she was sitting in. "No, not planning on selling anymore technology for a while, well, maybe the stealth suit and optical camo, but that’s it. I’m keeping my best tech for myself."

"I thought we had an agreement."

"No, you ordered me not to keep researching that stuff. But I never agreed to it."

"You may not have agreed to it Selena Kyle, but you did agree to it when you were Professor Stephen Kyle. Or didn’t you think your DNA scans were going to show that you and he were the same person?"

Selena stood and walked over to her kitchenette. "I had hoped that the changes in my DNA from male to female were significant enough that it would look like we might be related, but not the same person. I assume your magic ring there told you about what happened?"

"My ring actually had already identified you as a metahuman with the ability to invent things, then a female showing up at the same time that Stephen dies with the same DNA sequence, with minor changes, and having the same power? That’s a bit too much of a coincidence for anyone.

"So, what happens now? You have started disseminating the information you promised to keep out of humanity’s hands, and now there’s a huge problem."

Selena’s laugh rang through the warehouse. "A problem for you maybe, not for me. This is going to make me very rich."

"Isn’t protecting humanity from itself important?"

Jade got a withering look from Selena. "No. Humanity is going to kill itself no matter what happens despite your little group of do-gooders. There are always going to be those who are bad who will hurt people, simply because they can, take whatever they want, it’s not just the poor who are always with us.

"Look at that criminal ‘Heatstroke’ or that giant ghost that showed up in Las Vegas. Or that group of meta gang members out in Arizona. None of them are nice people and you want ME to keep my mouth shut when I have the devices that can level the playing field? There aren’t enough "good" metas out there to police the bad ones, and no one can do it alone. American Dream may be a good girl who plays well with people like Thora and Giganta and others, but she can’t be everywhere at once. Regular humans deserve to have police who can take down people like Heatstroke if necessary. I’m making sure they can."

"While you go and rob people blind? Taking whatever you can get your hands on?"

"That’s a bullshit argument and you know it. I break into places, yes. I show these idiots that they aren’t nearly as secure as they think they are. I take a little bit as ‘payment’ for my effort and work, for putting my body on the line. That’s only like having a subscription fee to my security services. The museum? I’ve settled any issues with the actual owners of record, and made sure to take credit for it, I didn’t want some minimum wage rent-a-cop getting in trouble. I’m not returning the items. The owners seem quite happy." Selena didn’t bother to tell Jade that the payments were under the table and in cash, the insurance companies and the IRS didn’t need to know that detail, neither did Jade. "The rescue of Lena Luthor? You want me to feel guilty about killing a man who had kidnapped one of your little ‘hero’ girls? Not likely.

"Fact of the matter is that I’m a mercenary. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the ‘right or wrong’ of a given situation, I just care about myself. If someone pays me to do something, I do it. If I get some visceral satisfaction out of it, what’s your problem with that, it’s fantastic. Despite what you may think, I’m not a bad girl. I don’t go out and slaughter people, and I can help you if you hire me. But if you want to make an enemy of me, that’s fine too".

We must inform you that agents of the military and the NSA are surrounding the perimeter and that American Dream is with them.

"You can tell your allies out there to go away, I can escape if I need to. Oh, wait. Nevermind. I’ll do it."

Tap into the Jade frequencies.

Compliance.

***Listen up, you Green Lantern Ring pledges. I’m not a threat to you unless you make me one. I can be useful, but only if you leave me the hell alone. I won’t work for someone who is trying to force my cooperation. I don’t have any noble buttons to push there’s not a heroic bone in my body. Hire me and you’ll get the best I’ve got. Unfortunately for you, that goes for the bad guys too. Want me to be part of your little band of merry girls? I will on my OWN terms, not yours. American Dream, clear out or regret that you and Jade are responsible for imperiling everyone here.***

The look on Jade’s face as Catwoman broadcast on her super-secret frequency was priceless. Catwoman didn’t waste any time, she pulled the hood of her suit up, limbered up the whip and prepared to sell herself dearly.

Jade didn’t look convinced at all, but Catwoman heard the back and forth, the various elements reacting to her broadcast and the ultimatum she laid down seemed much more convinced. Finally, one person broke through.

***Catwoman, this is Black Canary. May I enter your Lair?***

***Since you ask me so politely, you may. Bring Dream with you as well, may as well have all the super-de-doopers in one place.***

The side door she used all the time opened, Black Canary and American Dream entered. Dream was fully armed and ready for a fight, spoiling for one in fact, the song bird on the other hand looked cool as Tweety in a cage.

Catwoman looked at Dream. It was obvious that there would be no love lost between them. "Keep your team outside. I don’t want any of my Egyptian Artifacts destroyed by their clumsy attempts to apprehend me."

Dream’s eyes narrowed. The hatred shot at Catwoman was palpable enough to slip in if you weren’t watching where you were walking. "They are staying outside, but if you try anything..."

"Spare me your useless threats you brick. I saw what they did to you. You were so out of it that you didn’t see everything done to you. Tell me, have they shown you the real videos yet?"

To her credit, Dream didn’t rise to the bait. She crossed her arms her hands dangling near a pair of Glock 9MM pistols, ready to speed draw them if necessary.

Jade took a moment to create some chairs in an impromptu lounge group for everyone to sit at. Catwoman went to get refreshments.

Once seated, Black Canary started things off. "May I call you Selena? We seem to be at something of an impasse. You are obviously capable of being a superheroine as any of us are. Frankly, you make some good points that Jade shared with us all. You can be an asset. So my question is, what do you want to become that asset? Frankly, there’s too much of New York for me to take care of all of it myself."

A scoffing grunt came from the reinforced chair that Dream was sitting in, and Catwoman ignored it. "I don’t want to be a superhero. I’m not. I’m an inventor. I like pretty things. I like inventing new things. I will continue to do so and I will continue to release them to those whom I chose so that they can compete with you all. I can make things that will overcome your invulnerability Dream, that will silence your Cry Canary, and which will make your tech ineffective Jade. But I can also make things which will keep the meta bad guys from breaking out of their cells.

"I can stop crimes I see that the police can’t handle, and that’s all I will promise to do. Don’t bother me, and I won’t be a thorn in your sides."

Canary nodded. "I can agree to that. I would like to ask you to stop robbing the jewelry stores, but when asked, everyone has confirmed what you take isn’t nearly what they would have lost if you hadn’t stopped the crime in progress. I note that the police have pretty much stopped pursuing you in most of those cases."

Dream spoke up. "When you put one of the guards in the hospital with that damned whip when he got in your way, I can understand why the cops backed the hell off."

Jade held up her hands to try to get Dream to calm down, but Catwoman’s head whipped around, temporarily flattening her ears. "Are you and I going to have a problem?"

Dream looked her deep in her eyes. "Yes. That facility you broke into and the data you stole, it wasn’t just a few computer records. You wound up paralyzing one of the techs in there. You hit him just right and his spinal cord got severed. He’s a quadriplegic now, same spinal injury that ultimately killed Christopher Reeve. He is a friend of mine. He analyzed most of the elint that my team got and was assigned to that facility because I asked for him. You completely fucked up his life, and now you want me to be buddy-buddy with you? Not going to happen."

Catwoman kept looking at her. "I was unaware that the tech you mention was hurt so severely. Let me look at the films. Give me a moment."

She ordered the computer to pull up that incident. It replayed in her eyes showing her dropping from the ceiling where she had painstakingly crawled to get to the data center, and she was surprised to see a tech in there working. She did a quick karate-chop to the back of the neck to knock him unconscious and he dropped.

Catwoman nodded. She looked at Dream again. "I was unaware that he took such a severe injury from a simple karate strike."

Canary interrupted. "Those kinds of knock-out hits are the thing of popular fiction, they never work well in the real world unless you know exactly what you are doing. With your augmented strength, you could easily do permanent injury."

Dream nodded. "You separated the bones in his spine at C5 and C6, right at the base of his neck. He can’t even breathe on his own anymore. You would have been kinder if you had just killed him."

"If I found a way to fix him, would that be better?"

"It would be a start."

She nodded. "Then I will work on it. But if you invade here or try to arrest me, it won’t get done. Tell you what, if I manage to create a synthetic nerve that will bridge the damage, I’ll donate it to the medical community. Will that make it better?"

Dream looked confused. "Yeah, I think it would. But how do we keep it from the greedy corporations who only want to make money off it?"

Jade spoke up. "Easy, we donate it to the Christopher Reeve Foundation for Spinal Research and let THEM have the tech and sole oversight of the patents. There are attorneys I know who are very good at writing unbreakable patents, trust me. The foundation won’t make money off another’s suffering. I think this is a good compromise. Is it a deal?"

Catwoman looked into Dream’s eyes. "Deal," she said.

Dream nodded. "Deal."

Black Canary spoke up again. "I can agree to it and I think we have a détente now. I’m very happy about. I hated living in a city that felt like an armed camp, Not even Giganta could cover a third of it. I will spread the word to the cops and the NYBI that you aren’t a threat and can be retained for complex problems."

Dream added "And I can start the word being spread around the government agencies that you can be worked with."

Jade caught Catwoman’s attention. "And I will keep you in mind for a retainer if there is something that needs your special touch, acceptable?"

Catwoman nodded. "I think I can live with that. Don’t tell them where I live now. I don’t want to have to move again. I could use some hand to hand lessons if you would oblige me Canary?"

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Note from the author: Yes, this means you may use Catwoman and her tech in your stories. Please give me a holler and let me know what is up before it is posted, but reasonable story lines where Catwoman's tech would fit are good. Like using the nanobots to regrow spinal nerves, or bypass the Barbie Chip and so on.